Maxflier

I was in Barnes and Noble the other night and came across the Blackest Night hardcovers. Looks like a cool series so it peaked my interest, but there were a bunch of different books to the series and what really makes it confusing is some of them are numbered and some of them aren't so how the fuck are you supposed to know what order to buy and read them if you are someone like me who doesn't know anything about the series beforehand? Anyone collecting these and could post a list of the order they should be read?

fujishig

Some of them are numbered? I think only the ones with a few volumes of the same series are numbered (for instance, there are two Tales of the Black Lanterns Corps HCs that collect different mini series).

I think it'll be hard to determine the order, because they pretty much collect different series that ran concurrently. You'll definitely want the main Blackest Night HC, which collects the main series 0-6, but I'm not sure you'll need or want all of the other ones. I would recommend reading some of John's previous Green Lantern work, though.

Here's a handy list from another site that has a chronology and the collected editions each issue comes in:

http://collectededitions.blogspot.co...ing-order.html

Maxflier

Yeah, at least one or two of the books I looked at had numbers on the spine.
Thanks for the list, although it still quite confusing. I guess I will just read the one book you suggested.

TheMadFapper

As far as the reading order being confusing, that's probably because the storyline chronologically runs through different books,which are then collected in different tp's and HC's forcing one, unfairly perhaps to buy everything if one wants to get the full story.

It recalls sort of the days of the Crisis On Infinite Earths maxiseries and various crossover issues, a number of which would only a panel or to that actually related to events concerning the Crisis.

Thanks for that link fujishig. It'sa prettyy good one for keeping up to date on the latest collected editions, replaing the one that Mark Millar had but has let fall into disuse and hasn't been updated in a couple years.

Trevor

Quite the bump here, but that's how far behind I am in my comic reading.

Stumbled upon a bargain graphic novel rack at my LCBS today, and found all three Brightest Day hardcovers for $10 each. Geoff Johns I know I like, but seeing that Deadman is a principal character sealed the deal.

But crap, it sounds as if I should read Blackest Night first, and that looks to be an expensive and convoluted ordeal. Recommendations?

fujishig

You can just read the main Blackest Night mini, I think that will cover most of what happened (though like any event book, read all at once stuff gets crammed in).

I also seem to remember Brightest Day being cut short and ending on a whimper.

Strapped4Cash

What he said. Someone probably could read just Brightest Day, but I would guess that some parts just wouldn't make much sense.

My recollection is that it ended sort of how it was planned, but with certain changes that were said to be small. I believe that, at the time, they were gearing up for Flashpoint and what came after (nu52), so that may or may not be accurate.

The spotlight given to Hawk & Dove, among several other under utilized characters, finally resulted in their getting mini busts from DC Direct, so I'll always be grateful to the series for that.

The Valeyard

I just read the entire Brightest Day series last month. The final issue was double-sized (as was its sister title Justice League: Generation Lost) to finish it off before the New52 kicked in. The storyline was complete and it doesn't feel too rushed. There are a couple of dangling plots that were never picked up on because of the reboot tho.

There's a 3 issue Aftermath mini-series that came out right afterwards but I heard that wasn't very good.

As for Blackest Night, if you read the main mini-series and the Green Lantern/GLC tie-ins, you should be fine. The rest of the tie-ins were just cash grabs.

fujishig

I will say that if you enjoyed the characters, some of the Blackest Night tie ins were good... they did what crossovers should do, that is, allow the characters in the books to react to the storyline without making it an essential must-read-or-you-won't-understand-anything part of the main plot. In this case, the resurrection of dead characters and the interactions they had with people were decent at times (although the absence of the dead characters personalities made it a bit more straightforward).

But at this point, all those characters are wiped out anyway.

JasonF

1) I agree with everyone else -- for Blackest Night, all you need is the main series. Even the GL tie-in probably isn't strictly necessary and the GLC tie-in can be skipped entirely (not a statement of quality -- I never read it and followed the story just fine).

2) I preferred Blackest Night to Brightest Day. Brightest Day wasn't bad, but I found Blackest Night to be much better.

3) If you do want to skip Blackest Night, all you need to know is that Blackest Night was about:

Trevor

Thanks everyone!

My LCBS store gave out 25% off any book coupons on FCBD, so I threw them a bone by using it on Blackest Night tonight. I don't think I've paid more than 60% of cover price in years, but I'm in the mood to read them both ASAP. Hopefully work will be slow tomorrow and I'll post my thoughts.